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How CBS’s Bari Weiss can avoid getting an ulcer

January 12, 2026

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People vs. Algorithms with Troy Young and Brain Morrissey is a weekly podcast of wide-ranging, deeply insider conversations about all things media. These consultant-commentators released a recent show consisting primarily of what they called a “big picture diatribe.”

Two of the core ideas in this episode explain why free-standing media companies can make livings, but rarely create businesses. 

  • Horizontal vs. Individual products. “Horizontal products like YouTube always beat…the individual efforts of media companies” because “crazy sophisticated ad systems” are needed to succeed in making money for individual media companies
  • “Glue factory” observation. They believe “every media entity gets sold, rationalized or reinterpreted as some kind of harvestable IP.”

And this leads to practical advice from Young and Morrisey for the Editor-in-Chief of CBS News.  

“The funny thing is that [at] CBS News…Bari Weiss ultimately gets an ulcer trying to fix an irrelevant franchise in CBS News. [Instead] her focus should be on 60 Minutes extending across channels and formats to reach new generations because it does show up in the feed a lot on YouTube and it's a format that can work.”

Listen to the full episode.

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